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What's happening inside the NIH and NSF

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Re: What's happening inside the NIH and NSF

#781

Post by ceejayoz »

scarab92 wrote: post #775
insane_dreamer wrote: post #761

Earlier quoted context omitted.

The other big elephant in the room is that the self-appointed wanna-be ruler, Musk, owns companies which have received very large amounts of both government (taxpayer) grants and contracts. Back in 2015, the LA Times reported Musk's companies had received nearly $5 billion in grants. That's taxpayer money. Plus there's the SpaceX contracts--not saying those are unwarranted, certainly SpaceX deserves the contracts mor…

[flagged]

> Trump has stated...

... virtually every position, on both sides of every issue.

Come the fuck on.

Re: What's happening inside the NIH and NSF

#783

Post by rayiner »

Spooky23 wrote: post #733
jmward01 wrote: post #490

This is a coup and we are calmly debating budgets. Debating the % of budget and how useful organization x is and if y will still get grant money, and, and, and... All of this is ignoring the big elephant in the room that there is one single person deciding everything that happens in government as if they were a king. The right thing to be debating is how we can stop this from continuing and how we can hold those resp…

JFK wrote a book called “Profiles in Courage” - no courageous people are around. The “coup” happened a long time ago. The US has demonstrated that there’s no rule of law at the federal level for some time now. Once the Chief Justice leaned back and tolerated the open sale of the court, that was basically it. We don’t have the same system of governance anymore… we’re like Italy 1936 or Argentina in 1948 now. We’ll inv…

I’m pretty sure the coup happened in the 1930s when the government created the modern system of unaccountable executive agencies and a Supreme Court, under duress, approved it.

Re: What's happening inside the NIH and NSF

#784

Post by mrbombastic »

ReptileMan wrote: post #571
aunetx wrote: post #541

Earlier quoted context omitted.

So free speech is not a constitutionnal right if I follow your argument? You sound quite scary right now... (and I am not even concerned, not american)

Things become a bit more murky when you free speech while on somebody's payroll and representing them. Commercial speech has somewhat less protections than regular speech. And anyway the first amendment is about the congress. It doesn't limit the capacity of the executive branch to do ideological purges as the McArthysm period showed. Although it did got limited by the courts - from the reading of case law it had to…

Not sure I have ever seen anyone actually defend McCarthyism…wow.

Re: What's happening inside the NIH and NSF

#785

Post by empyrrhicist »

sam345 wrote: post #725
tootie wrote: post #682

Earlier quoted context omitted.

[flagged]

Agencies are not a separate branch they are part of the executive branch. There is no separation of power issue.

You don't get to just pretend these things aren't created and funded by congress, and that their operation hasn't been solidified and formed over decades and decades through interaction with the judicial branch as well.

The executive branch has an obligation to execute the laws - they don't get to arbitrarily pick and choose how to do that without constraint. Period.

If these were somehow created by executive action, it would be a completely different conversation. Pretending otherwise is disingenuous in the extreme.

Re: What's happening inside the NIH and NSF

#786

Post by williamdclt »

3D30497420 wrote: post #532
brylie wrote: post #497

Earlier quoted context omitted.

As an expat in the EU, I have a surreal sense of being a bystander at an ongoing emergency scene. I don’t want to be yet another gawker as this situation is unfolding but am struggling to come up with actions that are within my power to take as a form of protest, resistance, or solidarity. What are some practical actions that we can take to resist these sweeping changes?

Hope the US gets bad enough that people in the EU notice and decide they don't want to go down the same route? Honestly though, I'm in the same situation and I don't know. I did just start paid subscriptions to several media outlets that have been doing good reporting on the situation (Guardian, Verge). I unsubscribed to the Washington Post after they pulled their Harris endorsement (which was appalling), but their c…

> Hope the US gets bad enough that people in the EU notice and decide they don't want to go down the same route?

I really hope so too. My pessimist side fears that the powerful are observing the US, seeing that it works there and will do the same thing here.

Re: What's happening inside the NIH and NSF

#787

Post by scarab92 »

ceejayoz wrote: post #781
scarab92 wrote: post #775

Earlier quoted context omitted.

[flagged]

> Trump has stated... ... virtually every position, on both sides of every issue. Come the fuck on .

On the issue of whether Musk is allowed to review functions that he has a conflict with, he has only stated that Musk is not allowed to do so.

Re: What's happening inside the NIH and NSF

#788

Post by systemstops »

"There has been a government-wide purge going on of references to any sorts of DEI (diversity, equity, and inclusion) criteria, and indeed, various elected and unelected officials have for some time now been using "DEI" as a scapegoat term and apparently a shorter way of casting suspicion on anything that is not being run by some white guy. As a white guy myself, I find this phenomenally offensive, and I can't even imagine how I'd be feeling about it as a direct target of this garbage"

This is the kind of comment that caused all the public backlash against DEI. Completely out of touch. If you talk this way, don't expect the public to believe your claims about defunding.

Re: What's happening inside the NIH and NSF

#789

Post by Hongwei »

jimkleiber wrote: post #578
scarab92 wrote: post #310

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Academics should keep in mind that they rely on the generosity of taxpayers to fund their research. They don’t have an entitlement to other people’s money, and if they are perceived as wasting it or spending in discriminatorily then you should expect the public to become less willing to give it to you.

Ah, your post helped me realize that a lot of people probably have an anger or resentment towards academics. So maybe part of it is DEI, part of it is the resentment towards the kids in school who always knew the answers. I'm not saying this is what's coming from you, just reminded me of how many people have had so much animosity towards me over the years because of my intelligence, or maybe more so, my confidence in…

Smugness usually turns people off. It doesn’t matter how smart you are. No one likes people who act superior to them. Hilary lost over her “deplorables” comment. It makes me sad that the left is not taking the right lesson from this election.

Re: What's happening inside the NIH and NSF

#790

Post by causal »

meijer wrote: post #484
kristjansson wrote: post #308

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Even quoting the NIH/NSF budgets (or their line items) misses the point of the current actions. Yes, they're smaller fractions of the USG budget, but they not immaterial. This is not an attempt to 'save money' at the NSF and NIH (and USAID). A serious, rational effort to reduce their costs / increase their efficiency does not start with grep-ing manuscripts for 'underrepresented'. Part Five of TFA is on the money. Th…

Note: pg appears to be "generally sympathetic" to what Musk is doing here. https://xcancel.com/paulg/status/1886741943050211408

Thanks for sharing, worth having the full quote I think:

> I'm generally sympathetic to what you're doing. But I hope you will take your time and do it carefully. This isn't just a company. Companies are born and die within the system, and it's ok. But this is the system itself we're talking about here.

PG sounds nervous. I have to imagine there are a lot of nervous conservatives who didn't think it would go this far and are now too scared to stand in the way.

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